Trump says his inauguration will be about unity. It may be a difficult sell.
WASHINGTON — In what could be a political shift for the ages, Donald Trump says that moments after he is sworn in next month, he will present himself as something remarkably off-brand: a unifier.
The subject of his inaugural address? “Loneliness,” he told Kristen Welker, moderator of NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” in a recent interview.
“It will please you: loneliness,” he said. “It will be a message of unity.”
What that means in practice is currently anyone’s guess. Trump came to power in 2016 thanks to a divided electorate. He lost the White House after four years and regained it last month by delivering the same tough message in the same blunt terms.
At 78 years old, Trump is not about to reinvent himself, nor has he given any sign that he is rethinking the polarizing positions he took on mass deportations or pardoning those who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, while Congress was resolving Electoral votes. Votes confirming Joe Biden’s victory.
He remains clearly and frankly bitter about how he says he has been wronged by judges, prosecutors, Democratic officials and the media. In the interview in which he called for unity, he singled out the House members who investigated the January 6 attack and said they should be jailed.
“We are not in a happy, cheerful time,” Steve Bannon, a senior White House adviser in Trump’s first term, said in an interview. Kamala Harris’s “politics of joy” has failed. Why? Because the life experience of Americans is not pleasant right now. That is why Trump won by a landslide.”
However, some Trump advisers say he is sincere in his desire to heal political rifts. They said he was in a unique position to do so now that he had mounted his latest campaign and hoped to cement a proper place in history.
Something unexpected happened in the November 5 election. Voting blocs that had previously shunned Trump gave him a new look. He made gains among Hispanic and black voters in key states that are usually part of the Democratic coalition, where he won the popular vote for the first time in his three tries.
Pew Research Center poll Post-election results found that most Americans approved of Trump’s plans for the future. While the majority doubted Trump’s ability to broker a détente between red and blue America, a larger percentage had warmer feelings toward him than was the case at the end of the 2016 and 2020 elections.
“Having basically defeated the Democratic Party in Congress and [won the] “I think he sees there’s a huge opportunity here for bipartisanship and breakthroughs,” said Dick Morris, an informal political adviser to Trump over the years who advised Bill Clinton’s campaign. “And I think he feels that people are tired of the conflict on both sides and that there is a real opportunity for him here to open a new front.”
John McLaughlin, a Trump pollster, said it would be a mistake to reject his call for national rapprochement.
“As a businessman, Trump is not a typical politician,” McLaughlin said in an interview. “When he tells you something, he’s very honest, and you have to take him at his word.
“He will try to unite the country,” McLaughlin continued. “Trump will only have one term. There will be opposition to it. But he wants to obtain a historic presidency and achieve more for the country.”
Binding a fractured nation together is a goal that recent presidents have shared but no one has been able to achieve. Polls showed that Americans were in a bad mood: worried about the future and dissatisfied with political leadership. One of the few spots of common ground is the collective belief that the country’s political system is broken, Polls appear.
Biden mentioned “unity” nearly a dozen times in his 2021 inaugural address, yet two-thirds of Americans now believe the country has become more polarized since he took office. Monmouth University survey Found.
For Trump, a starting point might be to clarify what he means when he says he wants to narrow the political divide.
In his opinion, does this mean that his rivals should mute their political objections and align behind his agenda? Or does it mean that he will compromise with Democratic lawmakers and end attacks on those who challenge him?
“No one has ever bet on Donald Trump to do the right thing, because he never did,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the Third Way Foundation, a center-left think tank.
“President Trump will serve all Americans, even those who did not vote for him in the election,” Carolyn Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition, said in a statement. He will unite the country through success.
With millions watching live, the inauguration will serve as the clear forum for Trump to commit himself to healing, rather than inflaming national divisions.
Every president hopes that at least part of his inauguration speech will remain memorable. Abraham Lincoln’s speeches that ended the Civil War reached poetic heights. Ronald Reagan’s 1981 speech set the tone for the new administration: “In this present crisis, government is not the answer to our problem; “The government is the problem.”
Trump’s first inaugural address was remembered mostly for the term “American carnage.” After he finished, he was puzzled Former President George W. Bush “That was weird—,” he commented.
Bannon recommended Trump try something new this time — a gesture that could unite the right, left and center given the deep dissatisfaction with the lawmakers who will be sitting on the risers directly behind him.
“The one thing I would recommend to President Trump is that if he wants to unite the country, he is in the middle of the speech, going around the podium, facing the political class in Washington, D.C. sitting at the protesters, and reading them the riot act.” Bannon said. “Tell them things are going to change, that there’s a new sheriff in town. Then step back and finish the speech to the American people. This will unite the country.”
Too often, the noble prose of an inaugural address is quickly forgotten in the rush to begin a new presidency.
Analysts said that the final test will not be the words Trump speaks from the teleprompter, but rather the actions he will take over the next four years.
“If ‘unity’ is followed by actual policies that promote unity — like bringing Democrats into his Cabinet and working with Democrats in Congress on legislation that meets “And the desires of a lot of different types of Americans — that would be great, but no one expects that. It’s really a slash-and-burn operation, and he’s not even president yet. He’s just nominating extremists.”